


Ausencia

by Shaitanah



Category: Being Human
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Character Death, Dystopia, F/M, M/M, War Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:35:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To save humanity the War Child must die. Eve found a loophole but humanity isn’t as grateful as it should be. Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/467166">Lonely Rivers</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shirogiku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/gifts), [non_canonical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_canonical/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC.  
> Dedication: for shirogiku (my Eve is your Eve; don’t leave the fandom!) and non-canonical (did I ever tell you how much I love your obsessing over every single detail in this series?).  
> A/N: I actually hate writing sequels and multi-chapter fanfics but this story just begged to be written.

Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.

James Joyce. “Ulysses”

The tea is all wrong. It tastes the same but somehow paler, thinner. Her hands are shaking the first time she tries to make it after a break. She overdoes it with the milk and she almost spills the resultant drink over Regus’s scrolls. 

(The first time he visited her in her suite, he apologized for not having been able to help her. He said he knew Annie, they’d traveled together for a bit, but things changed – and well, being Lord Hal’s keeper of scrolls was better than being a pile of dust in a hoover bag. Maybe it was Annie’s name that did it, but Eve didn’t feel as sick at the sight of him as she did at the sight of the others.)

“Easy,” Regus tells her in that kindly tone that he adopts when speaking to her. She may be mistrustful, and for a good reason, but the man honestly fails at being a vampire, so she can drop her guard around him once in a while.

The sight and the smell of blood make her want to retch. He tells her she should eat something. She nods and smiles and – “I will,” – the promise she doesn’t intend to keep.

* * *

“What is it with you and hunger strikes?” Hal wonders. 

She feels giddy, needless breathing searing her throat. There is blood under her fingernails much like there was dirt before. She wants to laugh and she feels some repulsive, gurgling noises clawing their way out, but when she opens her mouth, there is silence.

He tries to pull her closer. She pushes him away and snarls at him, “Don’t touch me!”, lights up a cigarette with trembling fingers and coughs out the smoke. Hal grips her by the shoulders and says urgently:

“You can take a glass. No one has to die.”

And that’s – oh God, that’s funny. 

“Are you fucking serious?” She’s always had quite a mouth on her; he claims to like it. See how he likes it now. She stubs out her cigarette on his forearm. He jerks, but they’ve done worse. They will do worse. His blood inside her is boiling. “How stupid do you think I am? If you give me a steak, I’ll know it comes from a dead cow!”

They all tell her she needs to eat something. Like she’s a sick child. But hey, it’s not like she’ll die if she keeps going hungry. Oh, wait, that has already been taken care of.

She takes comfort in the fact that she is creating problems for him. She remembers the faces of his flunkies when they saw her. Jacob laughed and he carried on laughing even after he realized it was not a joke. Fergus cursed but mostly managed to keep a straight face. Cutler looked sick, undoubtedly imagining a variety of scenarios of what would happen to him if Eve told Hal about his involvement in her escape. 

Hal grips her chin and forces her to look at him.

“If you want to save humanity,” he says slowly, “sacrifices must be made.” It’s hilarious when someone like him talks to her about sacrifice. 

He lets go even before she insists on it. He has been very civil lately. She can’t understand why. They are playing a different game now, though she can’t possibly imagine what his interest in it is. He is not getting anything out of it, not even her. 

* * *

The press conference is Hal’s idea. Regus finds it insane but he wouldn’t speak up in front of Hal, and Eve wouldn’t let him talk her out of it in private. 

Her awakening is slow and torturous, much like falling asleep was. She won’t lie: after years of sleeping in bunkers, on the floor or in dirt holes, a real bed with a springy mattress and a number of soft, puffy pillows seems like a haven, even though it seldom brings sweet dreams.

Eve disentangles herself from the warm embrace of the blanket and walks over to the dressing table. The emptiness in the mirror still unsettles her. She peers at it intently as if trying to figure out how it works, how a simple mirror can make her believe, even for a second, that she is not here, that she is nowhere. But it could be worse. She could be looking at her reflection and seeing Hal. 

She gets dressed – a simple, elegant black dress and a string of pearls. Hal has been extremely generous with his gifts lately. She barely knows how to wear these things. She would have preferred her military vest strewn with crosses, but she is going for confident, successful and generally pleased with her life rather than writhing in pain in front of an audience. 

She runs a brush through her hair – a good boar bristle paddle brush with a rosewood handle (she heard the maids talking), nothing like those plastic combs with jagged teeth she had to use before. She doesn’t really know what to do with it. She has worn her hair long since she was ten even though Tom vocally objected to it and Annie was inclined to take his side more often than not when it came to safety measures. You never know what an enemy can use to choke you. Could be your own hair. That was how Tom saw the world. Everyone was an enemy.

Eve started tying her hair up in tight buns and hiding it under headbands when her participation in the fighting became more active. Something tells her a headband wouldn’t go well with this dress. She would attempt Audrey Hepburn’s look in _Breakfast At Tiffany’s_ (Annie liked the film; Eve has only seen an old, faded promo poster once) but she has no idea how to do it. She doesn’t want to call the maids; they are afraid of her and they don’t even bother to hide it. No one had ever made her feel scary before.

She ends up doing a simple ponytail.

Make-up leaves her positively terrified. She has to wash it off several times before she finally gets it right if you believe a flimsy reflection in a bowl of water. The empty mirror leers at her. She feels shallow for liking the way she looks, the way her nails are clean and neatly clipped, the way her hair is actually a few shades lighter than it used to seem in the sickly semi-darkness of the bunker. 

Eve is no stranger to public speeches. She has delivered her fair share of them before the troops of the resistance and she can’t recall a word of what she may have said. It feels so artificial, so insincere now.

The crowd consists mostly of what few “free” people remain in the city, humans and vampires alike. The rest of the country will hear the address live on the radio. Eve knows there are agents of the resistance out there, undetected, drawn by rumours and fruitless hopes. Just thinking about it gives her the biggest attack of stage fright she has ever experienced. She wishes they could just let the world believe the War Child has disappeared but that would be dishonest at the very least.

Hal is standing right next to her, flawless in his impeccably tailoured suit. She envisions procuring a stake and driving it through his heart for the audience to cheer, except killing Hal wouldn’t stop the end of humanity, not anymore, wouldn’t even delay it, and they would most likely cheer for her to follow suit.

She steps up to the microphone. She hates the way they look at her with dark, suspicious eyes. She says: “My name is Eve Sands. I am the War Child,” and there is no going back. Stunned silence holds for half a minute before exploding into a cacophony of shocked outcries, questions and exclamations. The vampires must be wondering why she doesn’t look like a prisoner. Humans, most of whom are collaborators and have been on the resistance black list for years, are frightened and uncertain. 

Eve talks about the upcoming healthcare reforms, the planned lifting of the pregnancy embargo, means to combat hunger and control epidemics, and wonders if it sounds like a load of political bullshit. She makes promises she isn’t sure they’ll be able to keep (isn’t even sure Hal plans on keeping them), and the words feel stale in her mouth. 

Someone in the crowd laughs. It’s a hoarse, abrupt sound that makes her think of all the dank labyrinth of the abandoned tube, the stench of mould and sewage in the guts of the earth.

“Pretty words,” the man says, “from the lips of a devil’s whore who’s traded her own humanity for creature comforts!”

Eve sees security guards moving through the crowd and she opens her mouth to stop them (she wants people to speak up even if they are not her people anymore) when something flies up and lands on the stage in front of her. There is a loud bang; flames rise and some dark liquid splatters all over the guards. Someone screams. Eve feels a firm grip on her forearm and is dragged away from the burgeoning inferno. She struggles to breathe past the stench of the melting flesh. An incendiary bomb containing werewolf blood. The resistance does not use organic matter frequently, for obvious reasons. She should be flattered.

Eve looks up at her rescuer. Surprisingly, it’s not Hal but Cutler, trying and failing to look unaffected.

“It’s fine, it’s all good,” he mutters; Eve wonders distractedly whom he is trying to reassure. “Just what we wanted, right?”

Eve says through clenched teeth: “Let go of me.”

“Hey, I’ve just saved your – well, maybe not your life but certainly your pretty face!” Think Hal would like you covered in blood burns, is what he leaves unsaid but she hears it anyway. Cutler has never been particularly secretive about his feelings on the matter of her recruitment. 

“Have you got any use for that hand?” Eve asks coldly. “Because if you don’t get it off me, I will break it.”

He jerks away. “Fair enough.” He chews on his lower lip and goes on: “Look, it’s nothing to– Things are going as planned. The death of the War Child, the deconstruction of a myth. Did you expect a pat on the back?”

She looks for Hal over Cutler’s head – because, honestly, if Hal doesn’t rescue this annoying git, she will stake him, and sod the witnesses. Cutler flicks his fingers in front of her face to grasp her attention.

“Who do you think you are?” she spits. She didn’t even know she could manage to look so dignified under such circumstances.

Cutler squares his shoulders, puffing up with assumed importance.

“Hal’s PR representative.”

She remembers a stupid joke Hal made shortly after her recruitment. Something about Cutler and Fergus being her big brothers now. 

“This is what the whole peace with the Cylons business was about, wasn’t it?” Cutler says. Half the time she has no idea what he’s talking about and neither do most of the Old Ones. “So go back there and… Well, insert something motivational here.”

He may be a git but he’s got a point. One bomb isn’t enough to stop her. 

* * *

She tries to read more of Hal’s long-winded books. She doesn’t even bother to memorize the foreign-sounding names and gets bogged down in the plot more often than not but his notes on the margins keep her going. His handwriting is neat, legible most of the time unless he is clearly in a hurry, which is when it slips into a jagged cardiogram line that is unreadable even under a magnifying glass. 

Eve begins her days by exercising. Press-ups, sit-ups, jogging, anything to take her mind off her situation. She takes long showers and almost makes herself forget about the shortage of water in the whole country. It’s easy to be altruistic when you’ve got everything, people say. But they’re not completely right: it’s much easier to be self-centred when you want for nothing.

She walks around the mansion in short-sleeved shirts, proudly displaying the ugly letter “H” burned into her arm. She can tell it bothers the vampires; her presence, her appearance, perhaps her very existence bother them, but it’s one of the few feeble sources of entertainment she has got. She catches herself thinking like Hal. It disgusts her that she is not nearly as disturbed by it as she should be.

The library is a large, stuffy room crammed with book cases, crates and suspended shelves, all of which are overflowing with centuries-old folios, ancient scrolls, modern printouts – anything that comes in paper. There is a huge, ugly-looking computer cobbled together from various black market parts sitting in the corner of the room like a mouldy cake. It groans and rumbles and overheats, spreading the poignant smell of burnt dust.

No one comes down here unless they need something from the Vampire Recorder. Eve finds the place comforting and Regus’s company more than tolerable. Despite being rather inarticulate in everyday conversations, Regus has a knack for telling stories. He turns everything into an adventure quest and she asks him time and again to tell her about her father whose heroic death Regus witnessed and those early days of the revolution when there was still hope.

Regus doodles when he talks. He’s got stacks of drawings starring himself as a dashing superhero rescuing fair maidens from all sorts of perils and getting blood, sex and public acclaim as a reward (the lack of respect for his work in the vampire community is his sore spot; he manages to insert complaints on the matter even into his accounts of how Tom’s camper van ran out of petrol in the middle of a remote Scottish byway or how invisible Annie gave an old farmer a heart attack by accidentally picking Eve up in front of him). 

He used to dream of getting published but of course vampires don’t read comic books. Eve likes them, tacky and repetitive as they are. The villains are especially good: the grey-faced, big-headed, malicious Mr Drizzle and the bipolar Heinrich Redshield whose enemies die of boredom while he is counting them. Needless to say, no one has ever seen these drafts. Regus is taking enough risk showing them to Eve.

“He’s agreed to all my terms,” Eve says, a hint of incredulity in her voice. They are back to discussing Hal. Regus looks sick and faintly curious at the same time. “What do you think that’s about? Why would he work against everything the vampires have been building since the beginning of the revolution?”

Regus shrugs and sips the tea she has made for him.

“Lord Hal’s got plenty of rats in his attic. Far be it from me to analyse him. Some vampires are simple: they’re all about food. Others are more complicated. And Hal…” He sighs. She can tell he doesn’t know what to make of her “relationship” with Hal; but the truth is, she herself hasn’t got a clue. “Out of all the bad news, Hal is the worst.”

Eve snickers. This insight is far from being novel.

“What I don’t get,” Regus says, “is why Mr Snow lied about the scrolls. Why didn’t he tell anyone about how important you were? Someone coulda killed you by accident. Griffin tried.”

Eve snorts humourlessly. It’s really not that difficult to figure out.

“Wouldn’t be much of a War Child if there wasn’t a war going on around me.”

* * *

When Hal is reading, his face adopts a strange expression, as if he both judges every character in the book and envies them. Most of the books in his personal collection look like they are older than Cutler. He must have read them a hundred times, which is an achievement if you ask Eve; she wouldn’t be able to finish most of them at least once. She wonders what keeps bringing him back to them.

It’s just one of the things she wonders about when she looks at Hal. She doesn’t like him and she certainly doesn’t have Stockholm Syndrome. She has never even been to Stockholm, never got farther than Calais anyway.

“Tea?” she asks, all business-like. She’s got questions she wants answered.

Hal looks up from the book, faintly bemused, like he has just noticed her. She has never offered to make tea for him before. He nods and watches her as she takes the canister and scoops up a spoonful of tea leaves. He doesn’t tell her how he likes it but he doesn’t have to. Black, with a splash of water. Such innocuous details are very easy to find out.

“Tell me about your friend, the werewolf.”

Hal frowns. “Why?”

She sets the cup on the table in front of him. _Because I want to know_ is hardly an appropriate answer.

“Okay. How about Truth or Dare then?”

He laughs. “You sound like Cutler.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s an annoying thing.” He sips the tea. “All right, I shall indulge you. Truth.”

Eve smiles and lowers herself on the chair. “Tell me about your friend,” she repeats, her tone deliberate and a little teasing. “The werewolf.”

“His name was Leo.”

She knows that already. He is being childishly unforthcoming. She fixes him with an expectant look. Twenty Questions is an entirely different game.

“We lived together for over half a century,” Hal goes on. “Then he passed away.”

“When you say you ‘lived together’, does that mean you had him tied up in your basement and visited occasionally to gloat?”

“Quite the opposite actually.” He sounds distant, lost in the memories he would rather keep under lock and key. “We had a ghost too. Pearl was her name.”

A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house. Sounds like the beginning of a fairytale. 

“You’re having me on,” Eve says, sounding more certain than she feels.

He glances at her and smiles. “Yes. I am. Fantastic tea, by the way.”

Sometimes she thinks he is all made up of smiles, filled with them to the brim, so few of them sincere. She inclines her head slightly, accepting the compliment. It’s her turn. The thought of sharing any personal information with him is nauseating. He will probably know if she lies, so that’s out of the question. 

“Dare,” she whispers.

Hal’s lips curve into a smirk. He leans into her across the table, fingers dancing over the table top to brush hers. It’s a tentative but intimate gesture that makes Eve feel uncomfortable. Hal smells of blood. He always smells of blood.

“Make me another cup of tea,” he murmurs suggestively. “Please.”

Wasting his round on that is ridiculous but since he is asking so nicely… No, actually, that part is not a good sign. Eve snorts.

She watches him drink, observing the way the rim of the cup fits between his parted lips. She remembers those lips pressed to her neck, more gentle than she would have imagined. She would have preferred him to tear into her flesh, brutally as rumour had it, but he was so tender. She feels like she will never wash herself clean of that tenderness.

“Why did you agree to my conditions?” she asks. He couldn’t have wanted her that badly. There must be another reason.

Hal’s eyes glimmer. For a moment, he is almost like the Hal she used to know. She doesn’t know what to do with him when he succumbs to silent melancholy. The look on his face becomes almost human, and it’s worse than any torture he could inflict upon her. She will take his cruel games, his savage temper, his inhumane jokes – anything but the sorrowful, resigned tranquility of a man reading a book because there is nothing else to do. It reminds her too strongly of how she feels.

“I didn’t say ‘truth’,” he remarks playfully.

* * *

There is a chapel on the premises, boarded up windows and bolted doors, and sometimes Eve walks deliberately past it and tries to imagine what it would be like to get inside. It must hurt like hell but it should be physically possible. A lot of things are, even coming in uninvited. It all depends on how you go about it and how much you are willing to risk.

Eve has never been religious or particularly well-versed in Holy Scriptures; she knows only what she can defend herself with. But she can appreciate the irony of God rejecting her for the sacrifice she has made for his beloved creations.

She has almost decided to try opening the door when one of the maids ambushes her and hands her a note. She calls her “my lady”, and Eve wonders if she has become the female equivalent of Lord Hal to them. The maids are human, mostly young, good-looking women who are trying to do everything in their feeble power to help their families in the resettlement camps. Their position in the palace brings their relatives comparative stability and better living conditions. They must have believed in her, these girls. They must have believed in the fairytale of the War Child, must have waited for her to set them free. The list of people Eve has betrayed is growing day by day.

She unfolds the note. Her heart skips a beat.

She tells no one where she is going. This is her business, not theirs.

The storage facility is old, sticking out in the post-bombing rubble like a sore thumb. Strong smells of dust and urine tickle Eve’s sensitive nostrils. There is another smell too, the stench of a dog, and something inside Eve, something she refuses to consider a part of herself, revolts against that smell. It turns her stomach. She struggles to breathe and ends up inhaling more of it. Disgust fills her to the brim; repulsion with herself for letting it affect her like she is one of _them_. 

“So it’s true then,” a man’s voice says.

Eve looks around to see a tall, black soldier with a vaguely familiar face. He was on the retrieval squad. He delivered her the final piece of the prophecy.

“Lucas,” she says, a little uncertain.

“Eighteen months,” he spits. “Eleven of my men died for that scroll. Is this really what they died for?”

“It is,” Eve says, simply. “The War Child saves the world by dying. It is written.”

He tenses but makes no move towards her. Eve looks him over and can’t see a single cross on him. How very generous of him. 

“Why didn’t you then?”

“I did!” she retorts. “Everything I was, everything I stood for is gone. The War Child is no more. All that’s left is Eve. And don’t I deserve it? Don’t I get a say in this?” She is shouting, willing herself to stop and failing. 

Lucas laughs. It’s an unpleasant sound and it’s cut short by a spasm that shoots through his body. He grits his teeth. An outcry tearing itself out of his throat turns into a low rumbling noise. It’s all too familiar, but Eve can’t believe she has fallen into a trap so easily.

“Funny,” Lucas squeezes out. “You’d think the War Child would remember to keep track of the moon phases.”

She can hear his bones snapping under his skin. She hasn’t been this close to a transforming werewolf since Tom died. She takes a few steps back and rests her back against the door. She struggles to nudge it open and predictably finds it impossible. She tries not to feel betrayed.

Lucas screams. There is nothing human in that sound anymore. He falls to his knees, hands clawing at the dirty floor, bloody saliva dribbling out of his snarling mouth. Eve darts past him, narrowly avoiding a blow when he lifts his hand and attempts to sink his claws into her leg. There must be another way out of the warehouse. 

The sound of shattering bones and splintering skin grows louder. It comes from the dusty darkness behind her. Eve looks around warily. Not only it’s going to be a very brutal death, but also a very stupid one. She has really brought it on herself and she’s not getting any bonus points for this. She chuckles nervously. Too bad she won’t get to see Hal’s face when he finds out his blue-eyed girl was ripped apart by a vengeful werewolf soldier.

Eve maneuvers between the stacks of old containers. The scent is much stronger now, coming at her from all directions as if Lucas has somehow split himself apart and invaded every corner of the warehouse. The sounds die down for a moment – and then a few containers come tumbling down, blown apart by the stroke of a paw. The wolf tilts his head up and howls. Eve dashes for cover. The beast sniffs the air excitedly and stomps after her. 

Eve drives herself into a corner. She can see the other door from here, only half-shut, a bleary strip of darkness peeking through. She grabs a random piece of wood and tosses it aside with all her might. It drops, generating a loud bang, and the wolf turns his head towards the source of the noise and presses his ears against his skull, alerted. Eve leaps up, planning to make a run for it, but someone pulls her back at once. A hand covers her mouth. She struggles against the grip, though mostly out of habit. At least it’s not another werewolf.

“Shh!” the man hisses in her ear. “It’s me.”

He releases her cautiously. She turns around and meets Fergus’s hard eyes and bites back a number of questions. Now is not the time.

They crouch in the darkness, moving slowly towards the inky-black patch in the doorway. She can see now that had she run, Lucas would have caught up with her in a matter of moments. They have almost reached the door when he lunges at them, his razor-sharp teeth bared in a terrifying snarl. Fergus throws up a shotgun, a standard-issue firearm for the full moon, fires a shot and misses. Momentarily disoriented, Lucas drops on all fours, claws scraping over the floorboards, and bellows angrily. Fergus aims again, but Eve grips his shoulder and pulls him towards the exit. Lucas crouches and pounces as they break out running. Scraps of dismal grey clouds veil the moon but it still blazes behind them, spurring the beast.

Eve scrambles over a pile of debris and looks around wildly. It’s a bombed-out wasteland on the outskirt of London, open and leaving them vulnerable. 

“Shit, I can’t see him,” Fergus mutters. 

Eve finds herself fixing the back of his head with an unmoving gaze. She bends down and picks up a brick, weighing it on her hand as if trying to make up her mind about how to use it.

“We’d better get going,” says Fergus.

He turns around, and she hits him in the face with the brick. He cries out, a dull, wet sound, blood streaming down his face. Eve seizes the shotgun and turns the barrel in his direction.

“You must be joking!” Fergus exclaims, wiping the blood off. “There’s a huge, pissed-off lyco after us, and you’re pointing that thing at me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“My job as head of the police force.”

She all but slams the gun into his chest. She could shoot him point-blank, make a giant hole right in the middle of him and look through it like it’s a window. She is tempted to.

“Did Hal put you up to this?”

“It might come as a surprise, love,” Fergus says exasperatedly, “but not everything Hal thinks about revolves around you.”

The argument is cut short by another howl. Fergus curses and makes a grab for the shotgun but Eve takes a few rapid steps back, clutching the weapon fast in her hands.

“Give me back my gun,” he demands. 

A dark shape darts towards them. Fergus ducks. The werewolf roars and snaps his jaws, going for a bite.

“Give me my fucking gun!”

A gunshot thunders. Lucas yelps. His carcass drops heavily amid the wreckage, mid-run. Fergus meets Eve’s stunned look and smirks slowly. She drops the gun in disgust, spins around and starts walking away, shaking, in steps that are too broad to be comfortable.

“Well,” Fergus remarks, catching up with her. “I’m impressed.”

He has picked up the shotgun; it’s resting on his shoulder like in those Wild West films that Jacob favours. There is a west in London and things can be pretty wild (in fact, they are most of the time); Fergus probably sees himself as some kind of a sheriff.

“Don’t be,” Eve says coldly. “He’s not dead.”

They walk in silence for a while.

“One of your boys, wasn’t he?” Fergus asks. “We’ve been tracking him for a long time. I was here for him, not for you. Figured you might need some help though.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake! Not another one of _them_ expecting gratitude from her. But no, Fergus is not Cutler, words mean nothing to him and he couldn’t care less about Eve in general. He might have left her there to be slaughtered but Hal would have had his head for it. It’s not goodwill, it’s practicality.

The blood coagulates, and his voice comes out a bit nasal.

“You know, the body count you’re leaving is really something.” He takes a deep breath through the nose to clear it and winces in pain. “But one of these days, when the shit hits the fan, you’ll have to decide once and for all who your people are.”

The worst thing is that he has a point.

* * *

Eve remembers the day Lucas brought her the last scroll. She had just come back from captivity and she spent her days poring over the parchments and mulling over her experiences as Hal’s prisoner. He walked in quietly and held it out to her, a scrap of human skin rolled up in a tube and bundled up in some dirty fabric. Eve unfolded it with trembling fingers and placed it underneath the other two pieces. As she read and the horrible truth was slowly sinking in, Lucas told her it wasn’t their first meeting. He seemed to remember her from a while back, back when she hadn’t been so disappointed and so disappointing to everyone else. 

She could have told him to stick a knife between her ribs right there and then. Get it over with. Instead, she ordered him to leave and she took a few hours to think and she returned to the palace and offered herself to Hal. Maybe the people were right: maybe she was the devil’s whore. 

She curls up in the bathtub, hot water pelting down on her, boiling out the aching in her muscles, the dust and the fear. It cannot beat the hunger though. She grips the edge of the bathtub, fingers rigid and white like bone, and grits her teeth, choking on the scream that is stuck in her throat. Water keeps pouring, colouring her heated skin red. As the tint deepens, raw and scalded, she can see blood dripping down her hands, trickling between the fingers, coating her arms in a crimson film. Eve releases a sharp breath and screws her eyes shut. When she opens them, it’s just water.

Her legs buckle as she gets out of the tub. The bathroom is filled with steam. The mirror has misted over, for once concealing its dreary emptiness from her. Eve runs her fingers through her wet hair and pulls at it, digs her nails into her skull but the pain is bland, insufficient. Her entire body spasms with jolts of hunger. She gets dressed rapidly and staggers along the corridor towards Hal’s quarters.

No, she can’t stand to see him now. The bastard that did this to her. She leans heavily against the wall and balls her fists and struggles to hold her breath. Everything within these walls reeks of blood.

She continues walking slowly, deliberating every step, until his door looms in front of her. She slams her fist against the paneling and receives no answer. It dawns upon her that he wouldn’t be in on a full moon. Having canceled the dog fights last month, he would most likely be drowning his boredom in blood and liquor at one of Jacob’s infamous parties. Exactly the sort of a social event she would do well to stay away from. Eve curses under her breath and trudges towards Jacob’s quarters.

Jacob opens the door himself. Eve makes an effort to look away from the bloodstains on his chest. He offers her a welcoming smile. She asks about Hal, and he beckons her inside. The room is smoke-laden. The heady scent of blood and heated flesh makes Eve’s mouth dry. She spots Hal in the corner of the room, sprawled on the sofa with a half-naked girl on top of him. Blood oozes from the bitemarks all over her body and her forearms are dotted with cigarette burns. 

Eve spins around and storms out of the room, feeling sick. She has almost reached the stairs when Hal catches up with her. He grips her elbow and makes her turn to face him. She could claw his eyes out.

“Fergus told me what happened,” Hal says quietly.

She can smell the girl on him. Just a drink, though, nothing more.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she spits, seething with anger.

“Helping you to save humanity. Mostly. But I’m entitled to a break every now and then, aren’t I?”

“Are you also entitled to using a few select representatives of humanity as your own personal ashtrays?”

Hal shrugs. “I needed to vent.” He looks smug as usual, but there is a certain shade of discomfort lurking just beneath the haughty façade. 

Eve bangs furiously on his chest with her fists until he lets go of her arm. He doesn’t bother putting up any resistance. Incensed by his attitude, Eve punches him in the stomach, kicks him in the shin, anywhere she can reach, making the blows as painful as possible. 

“I should have staked you when I had the chance!” she growls. 

Hal smirks. She had many chances and she’s missed them all.

He pulls her into an empty room and drives her up against the wall. Their bodies are barely apart, a bloody loveburger cliché, and she hates that the scent coming off his skin makes every fine hair on her body stand on end. It’s not just blood. It’s him as well.

“You should have,” he says. “But then your life would not have been nearly as entertaining.”

His hands glide up her hips. Now would be the time to stop this but it’s either him, or some misfortunate servant for dinner. Eve doesn’t trust him but she trusts herself even less.

He pulls down the straps and the bodice of her dress. With the tip of his tongue, he trails a moist line between her breasts down to her belly. He kneels before her, marks her ribs with kisses and lowers his head between her parted legs. He flattens his tongue against the hot, pliant flesh, savouring the taste. She can feel him inside, slow, lazy strokes, that maddening tenderness again. He plays her body like one of his antique musical instruments.

Eve tangles her fingers in his hair and makes him look up. She puts her foot against his chest and pushes him down on the floor and straddles him, taking him in brusquely. She’s had enough of him undoing her nerve by nerve. 

She pins his wrists to the floor and holds them until she is certain he’s got the message: no touching. This is how he likes it after all. This is what all his whores do: climb on top of him and do all the job for him. She can do that just as well as they do. She must live up to her reputation.

She drags her nails across his chest, leaving pale white scratch marks. She could split the skin if she put more force into it. He would probably like it. 

A small smile plays on Hal’s lips. He takes her hand gently, brings the wrist up to his mouth and traces the veins with his tongue. Eve wants to withdraw the hand, but he holds it firmly. He sits up, snaking his arm around her waist, bringing her body closer to his, and bites at her wrist. Eve draws in a sharp breath.

She used to think growing fangs was supposed to hurt. But it’s not like that. She doesn’t even notice them until she feels a burning desire to sink them into something. They are as much a part of her as her nails or her skin or her limbs. 

Hal is smiling against her skin. There is already too much of him inside her but she is willing to go on until she overdoses on him, until she forgets herself, so she dips down her head and plunges her fangs into his shoulder. The first time around his blood had a ferrous taste; she couldn’t have told it apart from human. This time it’s more insipid, a pale imitation of the real nourishing meal, but it has a strange tang, neither good, nor bad, just his. She can feel human blood in the mix as well as hers. The way it circles in and out of her system is mind-boggling.

She pulls away, blood dribbling down her chin. She isn’t tidy; nor does she want to be. 

She knows why he covers countless bodies in bitemarks. The very process of clenching and unclenching your jaws around somebody’s flesh can be cathartic. She learns it from him and she makes holes in his body and fills them up with her pain until she can’t feel it anymore. She feels nothing but him thrusting harder as she bites him over and over again, making sure he feels nothing but her.


	2. Chapter 2

Hal likes to make an entrance. He likes it when heads turn and spines go rigid and knees hit the ground and eyes reflect fear and admiration. It is his way of collecting obligatory tributes for the Old Ones. 

He appears to have grown tired of that lately. These days he is just running horribly late for every appointment. Making people wait is an exquisite torture if you know how to do it right.

It is Eve’s first time at the council table. This is where decisions regarding the future of the state are made. It seems rather unimpressive: a bunch of vampires sitting in their fancy chairs like dressed up mannequins, glowering at each other in dismal silence. Eve observes them surreptitiously. All the usual suspects are present: Fergus, looking around the room with feigned indifference (when their eyes briefly meet, Eve stands her ground, waiting for him to look away first); Jacob, sipping scotch and proudly demonstrating how bored he is; Cutler, locking and unlocking his hands as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with them; Regus, scribbling something in a thick notebook; a couple of others whose names Eve never bothered to memorize; and of course Hettie, Mr Snow’s envoy, surrounded by her retinue of recruits. Last time she visited, the resistance tried an assassination attempt on her. 

Hal deigns to appear over an hour after the planned start of the meeting. He flashes Hettie a radiant smile. The girl’s face contorts but she moulds her features into a mask of courteous indulgence.

“ _L’exactitude est la politesse des Rois–,_ ” she remarks in her high-pitched, childish voice, stretching the words unpleasantly.

“ _Et le devoir de tous les gens de bien,_ ” Hal finishes with condescension. He doesn’t like Hettie; everyone knows that. There are many theories why but the fact remains.

The girl scoffs.

“What’s she doing here?” she asks. She isn’t looking at Eve but it’s obvious she means her.

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’m asking you.”

They glare at each other for a moment. Eve says coldly:

“I am here as the liaison between the vampire government and the human resistance as per the arrangement between Lord Hal and me.”

She doesn’t need Hal to speak for her.

“The _vampire_ government,” Hettie drawls. “Funny you should call it that. Last time I checked there was no other government. The whole world is still standing only thanks to us. Whereas the humans seem to have acquired a new fad: now they’re not only killing us but also themselves. Oh well. Anything for a quiet life.”

A few chuckles follow. Hal smiles a calm, gentle smile, which, Eve knows, is the most dangerous expression on his face.

“I am sure things are going a lot smoother in that heavenly corner of the world Mr Snow has given you to play with, Hettie. Wherever that may be. However, we are here to discuss the solution, not complain about the problem. Let’s get to it.”

Eve listens to the reports with half an ear. It’s been almost a month since Lucas attacked and a week since she had her first official meeting with the leaders of the resistance on neutral grounds. Some of those men were old and seasoned, they had fought alongside Tom and remembered Annie or at least recognized her name. They had been Eve’s war council, her protectors and her jailers for a long time. It felt surreal to stand before them and speak for the vampires. 

But of course Hettie has a point. Their glorification of sacrifice has exploded into full-blown suicide attacks. Humans used to kill themselves for religious and ideological reasons; now they do it out of spite. They do it because they don’t care to live anymore but they still care enough to take as many people with them as possible. 

One of Hettie’s vampires clears his throat. Fergus who is reporting at the moment flashes him a scathing look. The boy (he looks but a few years older than Hettie though he must have been at the very least born before the pregnancy embargo) apologizes, his ears flushing red. Fergus continues speaking. Eve suppresses the urge to yawn.

A few minutes later the sound repeats, growing louder, and turns into a hacking cough. Eve glances at Hal: he tenses in his chair, a small frown creasing his face. The boy twitches and throws up a clot of black blood-like substance. Hettie jumps to her feet. Cutler exclaims: “What the hell is that?” Convulsions joggle the boy’s body once more, and he collapses on the floor, the same black fluid frothing on his lips. 

For a moment, the vampires just watch the fit in morbid fascination. Regus is the first to recover. He gets up so quickly that his chair drops on the floor and he runs out of the conference room. Eve looks round the room and fixes her gaze on Hal once more. Everyone looks, for want of a better word, ill at ease. They don’t understand what is happening. Even Hal seems to be at a loss. This is what alarms Eve the most.

Regus returns, accompanied by two guards pushing a gurney. They carefully place the still shivering body on it and leave. Regus catches Eve’s bewildered look and gives her a small smile, not nearly comforting enough. But then, she doesn’t expect to be comforted. She wants answers as do all of them.

Hettie lowers herself back in the chair. Fergus examines the splatter on the table from a safe distance while the others do their best to look the other way. Eve glances at Hal, waiting for him to break the silence, but he does nothing. His fingers flex, as if looking for something to grasp. The hands of the clock crawl slowly upwards. It’s been a few hours, and she hasn’t even noticed.

A tall, grey-haired man enters the conference room, leaning heavily on a cane. His name is Stromann. Eve has seen him a few times in the remote corridors of the palace. They say he is a medic but he seldom deals with prisoners and why else vampires would need a medic, Eve has no idea. He appears to be in his sixties, sinewy and strong for his age, with a lean, noble face and thin, clean-cut eyebrows. 

“I regret to inform you,” he says, looking at Hettie, “that the boy is dead.”

Hettie stiffens, lips forming a silent question. Cutler voices it:

“Of what?”

“Blood disease by the looks of it.”

Stromann’s voice sounds huskier than Eve has expected, gentler somehow. He stands taller than any man in the room and she has no trouble picturing him as a character in some medieval tale of chivalry. Perhaps that is where he comes from. The cane in his hand might as well be a sword.

“Vampires don’t get sick,” Fergus protests. “Was there dog blood–?”

“We found no traces of it in the boy’s system,” the doctor interrupts coolly. “Need I remind you that werewolf blood is a strong toxin, which burns and poisons a vampire from the moment they come in contact with it? This disease appears to have an incubation period.”

His eyes travel from one face to another, taking in the same befuddled expression. He looks Eve over briefly and turns to Hettie again.

“My condolences, Miss Hettie. What was the boy’s name?”

Eve half-expects her not to answer. 

“Mulligan,” Hettie says in a small, tired voice. For once, she looks every bit her human age.

“And what are we to do,” Hal asks, a tense mixture of causticity and worry in his voice, “to keep from following Mr Mulligan to the grave?”

“Too early to say, my lord,” the doctor answers. “We need to run more tests. But if I were you,” Eve could swear she hears _and thank heavens I am not!_ in his tone, “I would mind what I drink and from whom.” He makes a shallow bow and heads for the door. “Regus. Would you be so kind as to document our research?”

Regus glances at Hal who nods curtly. Eve thoughtfully watches them leave. She’s glad Stromann has requested Regus’s presence: she can keep track of their progress through him.

Hal taps his fingers on the table top.

“Well, I suppose that solves our potential rationing problem,” he drawls. “Wouldn’t you agree, Hettie dearest?”

The girl turns her head slowly and says very clearly:

“Stuff it, Hal.”

She exits the room with her head raised proudly to the accompaniment of an outburst of laughter.

* * *

Cutler remembers rationing during World War II. He remembers National Registration Day and food disappearing, coloured ration books and going half-hungry for what felt like forever. Some people had it worse, he supposes, but he was always far too focused on himself to waste his sympathies on someone else.

He was already a vampire when food rationing ended, only a year before Hal left. Food had lost most of its appeal but he still welcomed the freedom of choice. He looks at the sheet of paper in front of him, one of Hal’s many new decrees inspired by his alliance with the yellow-haired bitch, and he tries to imagine what rationing humans will be like. Will there be coupons and priority categories? Will vampires riot against it? Will they fight in the streets for a pint of blood from a living vein?

There are other changes as well. The pregnancy embargo has been lifted and replaced by the recruitment ban. This one, Cutler doesn’t mind. Ever since the revolution vampires have been recruiting indiscriminately and most newbies have turned out to be brainless cunts who believe that having sharp teeth is enough to be a part of the master race. That is an almost Fergus-like level of stupidity.

“Tell me,” Hal demands (no, perhaps that is the wrong word for it; these days he mostly _asks_ ). “What do people say about the new laws?”

Cutler fumbles for words. _Asking_ doesn’t make it any less dangerous: Hal can still put a stake near his heart or burn him with crosses if he feels like it. 

“They aren’t thrilled about recruitment requiring special papers and being otherwise punishable by death. And they’re hardly on board with the whole rationing idea.” He adds hastily: “But it’s temporary, isn’t it? Now that humans are allowed to breed freely–.”

“Are they scared?”

Cutler frowns. Is that a trick question?

“I’m not quite sure–.”

Hal chuckles. He is standing by the tall, half-curtained window, his back on Cutler; he looks like a ghost. Of course they are scared. They think Lord Hal has gone mad. They blame the War Child, the resistance, the strange virus that has been sweeping through the city. It’s a veritable dystopia and it’s not nearly as thrilling as writers and pop singers make it out to be.

“You can take my supper if you like,” Hal says. “I’m not hungry.”

Cutler bites back the _what!?_ Since when? Maybe Hal has indeed gone mad. Maybe they all have.

He walks round the table and touches Hal’s shoulder, indecisively at first. Meeting no resistance, he trails his hand down to the small of his back and whispers in Hal’s ear:

“I’ll make it up to you.”

He wants Hal to look at him. Hal hasn’t looked at him for months. He only has eyes for her these days. Maybe Nick is seeing things. Maybe he is too caught up in his jealousy and resentment. Perhaps he’s imagining the smell too. 

Hal turns around and pushes Cutler against the table. He’s still not looking at him but his knee is lodged between Nick’s legs and his teeth are at Nick’s throat, grazing the skin suggestively. Please, Cutler wants to say but doesn’t. He’s safe, he tested negative for the virus only a day before (that monster of a doctor insists on pumping out their blood every week as if they are not starved for it as it is) but he doesn’t want to push his luck. 

He runs his fingers through Hal’s hair, cups the back of his head and makes him look up. He kisses Hal’s mouth, keeping his eyes open and focused on Hal’s face. He moans into the kiss when Hal’s fangs pierce his tongue and he chokes on his own flavourless blood. He palms Hal through the trousers as he bites back but before he can split the skin, Hal pulls away and latches onto his neck. The bite is vicious and uncontrolled, a strong echo of the very first one, decades ago in that small holding cell. Nick arches his back, rubbing against Hal, silently begging for more. Pain is the only thing Hal has ever given him for free.

Hal shrinks back all of a sudden. He looks like he’s going to spit but he licks the blood off his lips and says quietly:

“You just have.”

His tone carries that oppressive finality of dismissal that Cutler always secretly dreads to hear. He draws himself up. Blood is dripping on the collar of his white shirt; he doesn’t care to stop it. He tries to catch Hal’s look but Hal has already forgotten about him. 

* * *

They say those who catch the disease die within a few hours. It starts with a cough that gets progressively worse until you begin to vomit black blood. You lose control of your body and the cramps become so violent that your teeth might shatter. When you’ve worn yourself out so that you can’t lift a finger, your skin turns ash-grey and black veins mottle your face. Every inhalation hurts, so you have to stop breathing, which means you can’t speak anymore. Stromann forces you to speak. He makes you describe the intolerable pain gutting you, makes you rate it on the scale of one to ten and watches your skin wither and wear paper-thin until your whole body falls to dust. You remain conscious throughout every step of the way and you know what’s coming but there isn’t a single thing you can do about it. There have been thirteen terminal cases in the past two and a half weeks, all of them vampires.

Stromann gives Cutler the creeps. He usually avoids the so-called hospital wing unless he needs to do a blood test, but he finds himself drawn to it now. It’s quite a popular hang-out these days. The Vampire Recorder practically lives there; maybe Cutler could trade insults with him and feel better.

He scrapes mindlessly at the crust of blood over the fresh bitemark on his neck. His body is still tingling with an aftershock and arousal. There is fear too. Damn right, they are scared. They are all terrified, even the toughest ones like Fergus and the War Child. They try not to think about the disease that has struck out of nowhere, the sickness that afflicts even such invincible creatures as vampires. They do their best to downplay it but Cutler has heard some people call it “plague”. Quite a big name for a trifle of an illness.

Maybe that’s why he needs to go in. He wants to see the lab workers. He wants them to tell him there is nothing to fear.

He catches sight of the War Child coming out of the lab. He can see the same need in her face and he can tell she has not been reassured.

He changes his mind and turns back. This place makes his stomach turn. He always hated clinical smells. The War Child walks beside him, silent, pensive. He imagines her squirming underneath Hal, pure instinct and passion. He doubts there are any special skills on the menu but there must be lust and frenzy and stamina. Hal likes that best of all. Does she give head? Does he caress that ugly brand on her arm with his tongue? Is he allowed everywhere or is there any part of her that is off limits?

“Do you drink?” he asks because silence is getting on his nerves as do the thoughts in his head.

“You can tell I don’t.”

There is nothing to be proud of, not really.

“I can smell Hal’s blood on you,” Cutler says. “I can smell other things too.”

“So can I. What I do in my free time is none of your business.” She pauses, then adds: “Actually, what I do in my working hours is none of your business either.”

Cutler smirks. “So you do that professionally, huh?” She looks like she’s going to hit him. He takes a few steps aside, closer to the opposite wall. “If your _abstinence_ proves to be detrimental to Hal’s well-being–.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She doesn’t know that he’s giving up blood. Maybe there’s nothing to worry about after all. Maybe it was just a single instance.

“He’s not your personal blood bank,” Cutler grouches. “Find somebody else to leech on.”

The War Child snorts. She must be thinking that he’s worried there won’t be enough blood left in Hal for both of them. Let her think what she will. 

“Do you even know what real hunger is?” she asks archly.

“I’ve been a vampire for eighty-seven years. What do you think?” He had been hungry as a human as well. His family arguably had it better than some during the war but there was always room for envy. “You know,” he sighs, “vampires aren’t the only ones who do horrible things. I could name quite a few moments in history when horrible, unspeakable things happened and vampires weren’t even there. So spare me your holier-than-thou, resistance martyr attitude, Goldilocks.”

* * *

Three weeks after Mulligan’s death they are back in the conference room, waiting. Their poker faces are slipping.

“I, uh… I’ve got bad news,” Regus announces, “and… well, badder news.”

“Just get on with it,” Hal huffs impatiently.

Regus leafs through his papers and looks back up.

“The, uh… disease affects only our kind. So… the humans are safe. In case you’ve been worried about the food and all. The werewolves also seem to be immune.” Regus snuffles and chews on his lower lip thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, everyone on Dr Stromann’s team has caught the disease. Some have already died, others are quarantined, including Dr Stromann himself. That, uh… proves you don’t have to drink the infected blood to… er… It also means we’ve got no medical personnel left but that’s okay because we have no idea how to treat this thing anyway.” He attempts a reassuring smile. It meets no approval from anyone in the room. “So… there.”

Eve didn’t expect this. No one did. They are all just as dumbstruck as she is. The thought of some mystical plague cutting the vampires down like blades of grass would have seemed ludicrous only a month before. Some fifteen years ago humans tried biological warfare on the invaders; it never worked.

“Where does it come from?” Jacob asks. His voice is all but trembling.

Regus shrugs.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hettie exclaims and points at Eve. “It’s her fault!”

“My fault?” That’s new. Eve has never had a plague blamed on her before. “How on earth–?”

“You’re the War Child, sweetie. You’re supposed to destroy us all. It’s written. There you go.”

“This is ridiculous,” Hal interjects. “You can’t seriously believe–.”

Hettie narrows her eyes dangerously. 

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot believe in. You should never have recruited her, Hal. You brought this on us!”

Hal’s face darkens. 

“Shall I remind you,” he says through gritted teeth, “that the first victim was _your_ recruit?”

“We’ll see what Mr Snow has to say about this.”

Hal laughs. There is a hysterical edge to his laughter.

“Wake up, Hettie! How long has it been since you last heard from him? Mr Snow won’t have anything to say about any of this because he doesn’t care. He left us.”

Hettie leaps off the chair and heads for the door. She casts a scathing look at Eve but it does nothing. Eve knows they won’t be seeing each other again. A few weeks ago Regus advised her to watch out for Hettie just in case. He said she could be very vengeful. Eve wondered if Hettie had other reasons to hate her aside from her being the prophesied War Child. “Your father did kill her favourite recruit,” Regus told her. “And then he killed two more Old Ones. It’s not the kind of thing someone like Hettie would let go of willingly.”

And yet, Hettie has never made her move. She won’t make it now either. Suddenly all the old scores seem meaningless in the face of the plague.

“No,” Hettie says, without looking at Hal. “He left you. And for a good reason.”

Eve looks for any reaction on Hal’s part but he stonily watches Hettie leave. The room remains quiet for a while as everyone processes the news.

“What if it’s not supernatural?” says Jacob. “The resistance must have created some sort of a biological weapon. Maybe they found a way to poison their blood. There must be an antidote.”

“You think we haven’t tried?” Eve chuckles. “Hasn’t Regus just said you don’t have to drink the blood to catch the virus? Trust me, if it were us… if it were humans, I’d know about it.”

“Hettie’s right about one thing,” Jacob says after a pause. “We can’t just sit here, doing nothing. I’m sorry, Hal. I can’t die like this.” He shakes his head. “Not like this.”

“If you walk out of here, I’ll stake you as a deserter,” Hal says calmly.

An indulgent smirk twists Jacob’s lips. “We’re not at war anymore. We lost the war.”

No one dares to shut him up because it’s true and no one dares to stop him when he follows Hettie because there will be no safety in numbers when the plague strikes at full force. From now on, they are alone.

* * *

Eve visits the quarantine zone after the meeting. There is no reason for her to be here: the dying vampires will not tell her anything new and she has never been fond of looking at death for too long. Old men of the resistance warned her not to give death any reasons to stare back.

She looks decidedly away from a few piles of ash on the floor. Dr Stromann is still alive. He doesn’t look well but his skin hasn’t yet acquired that ashen hue that reminds her strongly of Mr Snow. He spots her and beckons her closer. She stops a few steps short of the transparent vinyl wall of the hastily erected isolation room separating them and takes in Stromann’s chapped, greyish lips and his feverish eyes. There are plenty of things she could say to him. He was always more interested in studying the plague than treating it. She could throw it in his face now and she almost does, wanting for once to be mindlessly cruel.

“Is it true?” she restrains herself to ask. “Is it incurable?”

“It’s true that I shan’t be the one to find the cure,” Stromann replies calmly. “Let me give you one piece of advice, child. Pass it on to Lord Harry, will you?” She nods. He starts coughing and expectorates a clot of black blood. He raises his hand and shows her the spatter. “When this starts happening, there is no way back. Soon you will have a full-blown epidemic on your hands. Stake anyone who exhibits these symptoms. Don’t wait for them to die. It’s just needless torture. Stake them.”

Show mercy, he means. How hypocritical of a vampire who used to march under Hal’s banners.

Eve pulls a stake out of the inside pocket of her jacket. She offers it to Stromann. The doctor shakes his head and smiles a gentle, resigned smile.

“No. Thank you, but no.”

“Why?”

“Curiosity.” He struggles through another coughing fit. “I’d like to see for myself how it develops.”

Eve slowly lowers the stake on the floor. In case he changes his mind. The doctor nods.

“Child,” he calls after her when she is about to leave. “Don’t listen to those superstitious morons who blame it on you. In times like these, people tend to start a witch hunt.”

A new fit cuts his speech short. Stromann wheezes and doubles over, disgorging black mush that looks like mud. He starts trembling. Eve stares at him, mesmerized, having discovered a weapon more powerful than a stake. A stake can miss its target but this never will. 

She snaps out of it and turns her back on him. There has been enough death and enough temptation for one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _L’exactitude est la politesse des Rois et le devoir de tous les gens de bien._ – Punctuality is the politeness of kings and the duty of gentle people everywhere. (Louis XVIII)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title is Spanish for absence.  
>  **A/N** : Here it is, the final ~~piece of the prophecy~~ chapter. *sob*

Regus tells her to eat something. Eve rolls her eyes – haven’t they been through this? Regus grins and offers her a tin of biscuits. They are a bit stale but she cannot really concentrate on the taste anyway. She smiles gratefully. 

It has been a stressful week. Caught between the vampire plague and the outbreaks of cholera, typhus and tuberculosis among the humans, Hal decided to shut down the newly opened hospitals in order to restaff the lab at the palace. In Eve’s opinion, it was a disastrous idea: humans needed qualified medical help if only to keep the blood supply running, whereas no one really believed that the cure for the plague could be found. Hal and Eve had a vehement row in the middle of a council meeting and he still did things his own way. Frankly, Eve was too worn out to argue any longer. It bothered her how indifferent she had become even if she told herself she was just biding her time.

The backlash was terrible. The resistance fighters launched a series of attacks, bombing the blockposts around London and stationing their own guards on the perimetre, effectively cutting the city off from the rest of the country. Most human collaborators were either executed or defected to the resistance. It was the beginning of open warfare. More terrorist acts followed. Fergus got killed when a mined car meant for Hal exploded prematurely. 

“There’s a picture of a naked woman on the tin,” Eve observes, twiddling the biscuit tin in her hands. The woman in question is dark-haired, curvaceous and has sensual, ruby-red lips.

Regus snatches the tin away from Eve and shrugs apologetically. She chuckles. Regus pours himself a glass of whiskey, gives it a thought and pours another one for Eve.

“To Fergus,” he proclaims, raising the glass. Eve knits her eyebrows. “Thank God the bastard’s dead,” Regus adds and downs the whiskey.

They keep quiet for a while, a bizarre, long-drawn-out moment of silence for Fergus. Regus’s words seem oddly half-hearted. He doesn’t have any particular fondness for anyone in the palace except maybe Eve, but she knows for a fact he doesn’t want them dead either. Not even Hal.

“He got a good death though,” Regus mumbles. “The kind of death he wanted.”

“Fergus wanted to die?” She finds it hard to believe.

“He wanted to die for Hal.”

Whiskey, amber-coloured and sharp-smelling, splashes in the glass as Eve rocks it meditatively. She never knew that about Fergus but she can relate. She grew up with a reason to die.

The phone rings, interrupting Eve’s ruminations. Regus picks up the receiver, listens to the voice on the other end of the line and informs Eve that Hal wants to see her. With a sigh, she sets the glass aside and gets up. She fixes it with a doubtful look, picks it up again and drinks the liquor in one gulp. She’ll most likely need all the sedatives she can get if their great lord has another shouting match in mind.

Hal looks tired, humanly so, dark shades beneath his eyes, irritation building up in his every gesture. They are all tired, steeped in fatigue that is bone-deep. The challenges of true leadership. He scowls when Eve jokingly brings it up and asks her what the devil she knows about true leadership.

“I know that it’s not a game,” Eve answers. “It’s more demanding than killing pretty girls and gambling on dogfights.”

Hal chuckles mirthlessly. His fingers move fluidly around a small object. He often strums out some odd rhythm, it’s his way of keeping focused, but it’s the first time Eve sees him twisting something in his hand.

“What’s that?” Eve asks.

Hal holds up his palm, revealing a small white domino. She reaches out to touch it. Hal’s fingers curl around the piece as if involuntarily, shielding it from her.

“A memory,” he whispers.

“Of Leo?” It’s only half a question; she knows the answer.

“I didn’t invite you here to reminisce,” Hal says briskly and gestures for her to sit down. “I want you to take over the force.”

“The coppers? Are you kidding me?”

“Fergus might have been a shit person but he commanded respect from the likes of him. They will rip the rebels’ heads off with their bare teeth for what was done to him.”

“He died in the line of duty,” Eve points out. “They should have expected that.”

Hal puts the domino down. It captures Eve’s look, mercifully averting it from a blood-stained glass on the edge of the table.

“We need the police force,” Hal says clearly. “They are the final line of defense. Right now they fear the plague almost as much as they fear me but they hate the resistance more than they fear the plague. I want this brutish horde reigned in. You are the only person I trust to do this.”

Eve looks up. Trust has never been an issue between them, if only because they never had it.

“Why?” she asks.

“You never lose sight of the objective. That is something you and Fergus have in common.”

It is also something that is not entirely true.

“These people have butchered thousands of humans,” Eve says hotly. Her cheeks flush pink. She is relieved to know she can still get properly angry about something. “They have hunted werewolves for sport. They have served as wardens in death camps. They gave me this!” She jerks her sleeve up to expose the brand. “And now you want me to work with them?”

“They have done all that on my orders,” says Hal calmly, lest she should ever forget. She never would: she steels her mind against such forgetfulness every day. “And now they will work with you on my orders.”

Eve reaches for the domino again. Hal catches her hand. Their eyes meet. 

“Okay,” she says. “If you reopen the hospitals.”

“Out of the question.”

“People are dying!” she exclaims and almost succeeds in making herself believe that she cares this much.

“So are my people,” Hal counters. 

He lets go of her hand, gets up and walks around the table, coming to stand behind Eve. She tells him to stop being childish. He protests that it’s called “negotiating”. The sound of liquid pouring into a glass reaches her ears. She rises to face Hal who is holding up a glass of blood invitingly.

“I shall restore the one medical officer per camp system,” he says, “if you drink. You should know what you’re fighting for.”

She hates this man. Precisely this man, she knows that now. Hal Yorke has too many layers. He is a labyrinth easy to get lost in. The man in front of her is just one of many lurking inside him but he is the face from the posters, the pitiless bastard playing cruel, never-ending games.

He brings the glass closer to her mouth. If she moves forward a couple of millimetres, her lips will touch its rim. Her eyes train into Hal’s. Two can play that game.

“If I drink,” she says, “you will do that and you will also address the people, calling for peace.”

Hal laughs. Eve takes the glass quickly and pours its contents down her throat before she has changed her mind. The richness of flavour sears the roof of her mouth. She swallows convulsively, her face contorting with disgust mingled with pleasure. She knows what she looks like; she has seen a lot of young vampires tasting their first blood. Shivers run down her spine. She refrains from licking her lips and looks at Hal again. He is smiling that steely smile of his, but it has long since bled out of his eyes, replaced by a dark, haunted expression. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

He leans closer as if to kiss her and freezes when their lips are barely an inch apart.

The next day he delivers the promised speech and she puts on the black coat with a red armband and goes out in the streets.

* * *

Recruitment rule number one: don’t tell the newbie what is going to happen to him; tell him what isn’t. He is never going to die. He is never going to grow old. He is never going to succumb to diseases. Funny that: as if vampires don’t lie enough.

Hal’s own maker was a doctor. An army surgeon during a war. He left as soon as he taught Hal the basic necessities, and Hal never saw him again. Needless to say, neither the surgeon whose name Hal can’t even remember now, nor the Old Ones ever mentioned even the remote possibility of a plague that would eat away at you from the inside and grind your body into dust within a few hours. Dry or a drinker, young or old, no one is immune.

Never going to die. Never going to grow old. Never going to succumb to diseases. Many people recall these words now, repeat them like a mantra, hoping it would somehow cancel the effects of the plague and restore the world to their expectations. Quite often these words were the last thing they heard before they died. At least Hal never lied to his recruits.

Blood tastes different these days. He drinks out of habit and because if he stops, he will have time to reflect on the world as it is and he will crumble under the weight of all that guilt. He sets up the dominos, a twisted homage to Leo, and he lingers in front of every door as if hoping they lead into Purgatory where Leo is waiting. There are days when he catches himself looking at the wooden chair legs for a little too long.

The phone rings just as he is about to try and force himself to sleep. His hand hovers over the receiver as he decides whether or not he should pick up. It’s probably Regus or someone from the palace guard, and the latter can only mean bad news. 

He picks up after all (of course he does) and listens to the silence on the other end. Not even the sound of breathing. 

“I liked your speech,” Mr Snow says. “It was very _fake_.”

“Really?” Hal asks. “I meant every word.”

“Oh, there is a vast difference between meaning what you say and believing it.”

Hal clenches his fingers around the receiver. He has so many questions on his mind.

“Did Hettie and Jacob find you?”

“Hettie and Jacob are dead.” 

Hal shouldn’t be surprised but he is. That’s all there is to it: surprise, bland, vapid, devoid of triumph or mourning, a distant cousin of resignation.

“What is it?” he whispers, not hoping for an answer.

Mr Snow chuckles.

“Will it surprise you if I tell you I don’t know? It amazes me, you see, that there is something in this world that I don’t know. It feels good to be amazed.”

Silence starts again. It runs like an old film reel, cracking and fizzing.

“You were always my favourite,” Snow tells him. “You’re welcome to find me, provided you live through this.” One more soft chuckle follows. The sound travels down Hal’s spine, cold and sticky. “But you don’t intend to. Those little shards of humanity that persevere inside you no matter how many times I break you – what are they telling you? That you deserve this punishment?”

Deserve it? Perhaps. Hal looks at the spirals of dominoes on the floor and smiles a little.

“Tell me, Hal,” says Mr Snow. “Was she worth it?”

Hal hangs up with such force that a crack shoots through the body of the phone. Does Snow really believe that a _girl_ is what it all boils down to? He bursts out laughing and he laughs as he steps into the domino circles and watches the pieces fall. 

* * *

Cutler knocks warily on the door before poking his head into the room. The last time he came in without knocking Hal shoved a cross in his face.

The curtains are drawn. Chilly darkness reigns in the room. Cutler puts a mug of coffee and a stack of thin daily newspapers down on the table. The top newspaper has a hand-drawn illustration on the front page depicting the War Child in a police uniform.

Hal pays no attention to any of this. He stares blankly at the half-opened window. Cutler almost slips when he inattentively steps on one of the dominos scattered all over the floor.

“So…” he ventures. “That’s it then? We’re all going to die.”

He tries to sound nonchalant. But the plague is spreading and the rebels are getting closer and closer every day. For once they have real power in their hands. Maybe the War Child really had to die to make them act. 

“Looks like it.”

Cutler positions himself in front of Hal, trying to catch his eye. 

“And you’re just gonna do nothing about it?”

“What do you suggest?” Hal asks, indifferently.

“Leave! Go somewhere far away. To South America.”

Hal’s lips twitch, forming a condescending half-smile. 

“I told you once: there is nowhere to run. It will find you in South America. It will found you in bloody Antarctica.”

Cutler leans into him, studying his face obsessively. Hal shifts his gaze onto him reluctantly.

“Please,” Nick says in a barely audible whisper, a vague movement of lips. He can’t even hear his own voice but there, he’s finally said it.

“What?” 

He smiles and shakes his head. “Never mind.” A cross in the face would seem like a blessing now, but Hal just stands there, quietly, and Nick thinks that maybe one of the reasons the rock bands have died out is because they were always right. _After years of waiting nothing came._

* * *

It feels strange to be hated. Eve likes to think she is no stranger to the feeling but she has never been the object of true hate before. These days she is caught between Scylla and Charybdis. The vampires hate her because half of them blame the plague on her and the other half thinks her very existence makes them look like idiots: first the War Child must die, then the War Child must be protected at all costs, now the War Child has replaced Fergus and nobody deigned to ask their opinion on the matter. At least the vampires seem to respect her enough not to try and ram a stake into her back. Or perhaps they just fear Hal too much.

The resistance hates her for her betrayal. She should be okay with this – they have never been stronger or more single-minded, – but she isn’t, not really. Deep inside, she is still the girl who shook their hands for luck before they went on a mission.

You’re a vampire, she tells herself every morning. The mirror echoes her by displaying no reflection. She puts on her black coat, scraping her nails against the red armband and the tabs and the stripe bearing the symbol of her new species. She handles the security of the palace, she dismantles the resistance bombs, she drinks a glass of blood a day and takes the rest from Hal when he doesn’t bother to hide from her. (He’s been doing that a lot, as though he’s got any right to give up now.) She hasn’t thought about Annie in ages. Sometimes, right before she goes to sleep, she replays Fergus’s words in her head: _One of these days, when the shit hits the fan, you’ll have to decide once and for all who your people are_. It sounds like yet another prophecy. She’s had too much of those.

Someone calls out to her as she walks down the empty street. She spots Regus lurking in an alley between two bombed-out buildings. She makes sure nobody is watching and comes closer. They haven’t seen each other since she was given this job.

“War Child!” He looks her over and whistles. “Blimey, you look scary.”

Eve snorts. “Thanks.” Her gaze travels down to a rectangle of paper in his hand. “Is that–?” She recognizes it immediately. They used to come laminated, marked with a year and a barcode. The one Regus is holding is rumpled, poorly printed, featuring only a few words and a bold signature.

“A travel permit. I’m going in the morning.”

She can’t imagine how he got it. The city is closed off and under siege. All visa centres have long since been shut down.

“They’ll come after you if they find out.” As she speaks, she realizes that her men will be assigned to do it. “They’ll stake you.”

“Didn’t stop you the first time around, did it? Come with me. Even if you win, even if whatever side you’re on wins, the plague might still get you. It’ll be a stupid, meaningless death. You deserve better.”

He pulls out a second permit. Eve looks at it. Twenty-five years ago, Regus made the same proposition to Annie, and she agreed. Eve never stopped wondering what would have happened if Annie had refused.

“I’ve been traveling with fake papers my whole life,” she says apologetically. “I’ve changed so many names I can’t recall half of them. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

Regus nods in understanding. She should tell him that she will miss him, that he’s always been good to her, that she considers him the closest thing to a friend she has had here. The words get stuck in her throat. Regus leans forth, grabs the front of her coat and says firmly:

“Don’t let them get you. Not the resistance, not Hal, not his jealous cronies, not that goddamn disease. Don’t let anyone get you.”

Eve smiles and kisses him on the cheek.

“You as well.”

* * *

In the morning, the library is quiet as a burial ground. Dust settles on half-empty shelves. True to himself, Regus took what he could carry with him. Nobody appreciated his work; nobody would miss him or the documents.

Eve wanders the palace aimlessly. In the first days after her transformation, everything here bustled with energy. She can’t find a single maid now; they have all been slaughtered for blood, some of the luckier ones defected in time. The ring around the city is tightening. Very soon the rebels will storm the palace. The vampires don’t have an army in the field; only the police force, tired, disappointed and unreliable.

She halts by Cutler’s door as she hears music streaming from underneath it. She walks into the room. It’s strange that he is still alive. Perhaps the sheer power of his devotion to Hal is holding him in this world.

“What’s that?” she asks.

Cutler looks up from his bottle of liquor. The whole room stinks of it. 

“It’s called music,” he says. “A harmonious combination of sounds… pleasant to the hearing… yadda-yadda-yadda.”

Ha bloody ha. She gives him the look that spells: tosser. Cutler reads it right and shrugs to show that he doesn’t give a shit about her opinion of him. He kicks a chair closer to her, and she sits down.

“It’s called _Disorder_ ,” he says after a pause. “The song. Fitting, eh?” And then: “Why did you come back?”

She understands what he means, but hell if she knows the answer.

“I thought I’d make a difference.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

Instead of replying, Eve takes the bottle away from him, drinks and scrunches up her face. She doesn’t even want to know what it is. It’s too strong.

“Hal thinks we deserve it,” Cutler mutters.

“Did he say that?”

“Didn’t have to. He gets like that sometimes.” He reclaims the bottle. “When he’d just recruited me… He disappeared five years later. He was gone for over half a century. When he came back, shortly before the revolution, he said he’d wanted something different.” He brings the bottle up to his mouth and takes a swig. “I can see that in him now. Except there’s nothing left.”

For a moment Eve wants to be a normal girl. A girl who could cry.

The song spills over into the next one, loud and neurotic. Eve thinks she could develop a liking for this kind of music.

She looks around the room. She has never been in Cutler’s quarters before, never had a reason to visit, and he wouldn’t have let her in anyway. There is nothing between them anymore, no animosity, no rivalry, just the solemn kinship of the dying.

She spots records piled up on the table next to an old laptop modified with black market spare parts. There is a printer with a crumpled sheet of paper sticking out and a number of old newspapers under the table. Bookcases contain few books in contrast to Hal’s quarters, but the shelves are lined with little toy car models. They come in different colours, red and silver and deep forest-green, unlike anything you’d see out in the streets these days. Eve is certain they have beautiful foreign names but she wouldn’t ask.

Cutler turns the volume up. They don’t talk anymore.

* * *

The night is quiet save for the occasional shell bursts and backfires of gunshots. There are piles of dust all over the palace and nobody to clean them up. 

The throne room is immersed in darkness. Eve is sitting on the floor in front of one of the tall windows, arms wrapped around her drawn up knees. One of the red banners flutters gently in the breeze coming from an open window; the other is in a heap on the floor. Hal’s portrait watches her impassively. Eve sings under her breath:

When I was young, I fell in love.  
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead.  
Will we have rainbows, day after day.  
Here's what my sweetheart said… 

She rocks gently back and forth, empty of thought or fear, empty of anything but her own off-key singing. She catches a glimpse of Hal leaning against the doorpost and tries to bite back a smile of embarrassment.

Que será, será,  
Whatever will be, will be,  
The future's not ours to see… 

“My Mum used to sing it to me,” she explains when he approaches. “Appropriate for the situation, isn’t it?”

“I want to show you something,” says Hal.

He lowers himself on the floor next to her and sets a glass teapot down between them. There is a bundle of dried herbs on the bottom of it. Hal upends a thermos over it, flooding the teapot with hot water. Eve leans closer and watches, filled with bright, childish delight, as the bundle slowly expands and unfurls into a beautiful blooming flower. She looks up at Hal, her face brightening into a wide smile. There are so few pretty things left in the world.

“It’s called flowering tea,” he says. “I found it in the pantry. Thought you might…”

He trails off. He isn’t used to doing simple nice things and expecting nothing in return.

“Do you think I caused it?” Eve asks. She is still smiling at the flower but her tone is serious. The smile is ripping at the seams.

“How could you cause it?”

“Dunno. With my mystical War Child powers, as the prophecy goes.”

Hal flashes her a sceptical look. “By all means. You caused it. Shame on you.”

Eve smiles crookedly. Outside, the city is burning. She wouldn’t have thought there was anything left to burn. She wonders what the rebels will do to them when they get here. Stake them? Burn them? Chop them into little pieces and feed to the rats?

“They might just let the plague do its work,” Hal suggests. “Or maybe they won’t even notice we’re here when they raze the palace to the ground.”

How optimistic. Eve looks around the empty throne room, trying to figure out where to find cups. It’s a long way down to the kitchen. Hal fishes two crumpled paper cups out of his pocket and offers them to her.

“When you told me about Leo and your ghost friend,” she says uncertainly, “you didn’t lie, did you?”

“Would you rather I did?”

She fills the cups with steaming, fragrant tea.

“My Mum used to live the same way. The werewolf was my Dad, obviously, and the vampire–.”

“John Mitchell,” Hal interrupts. “I know. Herrick’s protégé.”

“Do you think Leo would approve of this?”

“I don’t care,” Hal retorts in the voice that suggests he cares a little too much. “Leo died. Pearl faded. I was alone. I didn’t–.”

“Tom died,” Eve cuts him off. “Mum faded. I was in a prison camp. I know what _alone_ means.”

The gunshots thunder much closer now. Tomorrow merciless torrents of fire will give way to candles flickering in the broken windows and screams will turn into hymns floating up to the skies, celebrating the final victory of humanity. 

“I hope you survive,” Hal says. “One day they might even forgive you. The last vampire on earth.”

Eve ponders the idea. It sounds lonely.

“I think,” she says slowly, “I wouldn’t mind sharing the laurels.”

She meets his eyes briefly and looks away again. The cup warms her palms and the sweet fragrance of the infusion soothes her. It would be nice not to die tonight.

* * *

Hal looks at the girl who escaped from him six months ago and returned of her own volition. The girl who refused blood for as long as she could. The girl who made tea and fought tooth and nail for what she was born for. The girl who wouldn’t mind spending a little more time in his company.

Tomorrow there will be rains to put out the fires as Disney films dictate. There will be round dances and public prayers. Years from now, grass will cover the ruins of London and flowers will grow over the bones of those who died in the camps. They will be remembered for a while and then they will be forgotten. Such is human memory. It honours the war, not the victims.

The domino in Hal’s pocket feels heavy. He thinks that he wants to live after all. 

There is a rasping feeling in his throat. No wonder, with all the dust that covers the floors. Hal is on the verge of cleaning it up himself, if only because he can’t stand untidiness. 

He covers his mouth with his hand and coughs quietly a few times to clear his throat. He lowers his hand slowly. It comes away smeared with black fluid.

 

_August, 2012_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _After years of waiting nothing came._ – from “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box” by Radiohead.
> 
> _“It’s called Disorder,” he says after a pause. “The song. Fitting, eh?”_ – Cutler is listening to [_Disorder_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhCLalLXHP4) by Joy Division.


End file.
